


Death is Cheap (But Dying is a Bitch)

by LalaRose27



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack and Angst, Dark Crack, Does it count as infidelity if she’s going to be a widow by the time the sun rises?, F/M, Infidelity, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:07:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22662220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LalaRose27/pseuds/LalaRose27
Summary: She lost count of how many times she played Hide and Go Seek with her in-laws. Maybe she should have fun with it.AKAIf it’s entertainment Mr.LeBail wants, it’s entertainment he will get.AKAGrace goes absolutely feral.
Relationships: Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas
Comments: 24
Kudos: 420





	Death is Cheap (But Dying is a Bitch)

**Author's Note:**

> Time loops are a pretty common theme in the Ready or Not fandom so I thought to myself, “Isn’t Grace tired of this? Doesn’t she wanna just go apeshit?” And thus, this was born.

It becomes a pattern the next few time loops. She dies or wins, and wakes up in the trophy room, hand healed and holding the card, dress white and full, and all evidence of her past physical trauma erased. 

Grace loses all hope by the fifteenth time she plays the game. No matter how many times she wins or loses she always ends up back in the trophy room, the Hide and Go Seek card in her hand. She doesn’t even fight it this time around but she does act extra giddy and cheerful. The LeDomas family is obviously very uncomfortable, even Aunt Helene who looks nervous for the first time. She reveals in their reactions, clapping her hands as she stands up.

“I take it you know the rules of the game?” Tony asks.

“Yeah! And don’t worry about the cameras, Alex told me you guys take tradition _very_ seriously in this house.”

“Right… We don’t use them.” Tony seems unsure as to proceed but Grace helps him with that.

“Well, better start counting!” She tells him, a giant grin on her face. She turns on her heel and skips down the hallway. Tony waits until she turns the corner before rejoining his family.

\---

After that particular round, she puts on the act of the happy bride, their uncomfortable reactions much more palatable than their somber reactions from the first night. Then she runs around the house, causing mayhem on the family until she wins or loses.

Grace takes one long walk around the house before coming back to the trophy room. She opens the door and ignoring the call of the prop gun, she grabs someone’s phone on the mantle. She scrolls through the tabs in the private browsing section until she finds a video that suits her taste.

The family hears sounds of slapping flesh and moaning. The family follows the sound to find Grace on the trophy room table watching porn and trying to tie her wrists together.

“Alex, sweetie, can you help me with the knots? You were always so good at tying me up.”

To his credit, Alex is beet red when his family gives him a look.

“Don’t _worry_ guys. The first time we did this, Alex was _very_ attentive and _such_ a gentleman. I’m sure you guys are just the same. We went on our first date afterwards actually. It was a _little_ hard to sit down, you know, with all the wax burns and the spankings and all. And my mouth found it a little tough to chew cause my jaw super tired of having a gag in it but don’t worry- the steak was _delicious_. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth, sorry honey.”

The family is looking at her now with their jaws on the floor. What happened to the girl five minutes ago? When was she replaced with this nymphomaniac?

“Well aren’t you guys coming? You have a ritual to take care of after all.” She smiles sweetly. Once the LeDomases move she throws her body back, hands above her head and legs spread. Her body is suggestive and the family members definitely get that. Everyone is hesitant to touch her but in the end Charity, Becky, and Alex tie her to the table looking a little pale.

_Good,_ Grace thinks with gleeful malice. _Let your last thought be of your son fucking me with candle wax._

(She refuses to think of what Daniel might think of her right now.)

Then another thought comes into her mind and she smirks. “Wow you guys tie really good knots. Bondage must be hereditary. Or is it learned? I don’t remember much about nature vs nurture sorry guys.” Grace pouts.

“What the fuck?” Charity says, dropping the rope.

“Is she always like this?” Becky asks, focused on the task at hand but still disgusted.

“No, I… I don’t know what’s going on.” Alex responds.

“Oh sure you do, honey. You’re gonna sacrifice me to Mr. LeBail. I hope you don’t mind though, I might sleep with him to get a nicer room in hell.” Grace says with a smile.

Alex looks nauseated as he processes her words. 

The rest of the night goes the same as all the other nights. They leave to dress in their robes and come back looking somber. Not Grace though, Grace is uncomfortably giddy with the whole ritual.

“Tick tock, tick tock,” She says as they pass around the goblet. “The sun’s almost up and if you don’t hurry soon there’ll be bloody chunks all over this room.”

“Will somebody _please_ shut her up?” Helene says. Grace knows how much Helene wanted her to suffer through the ritual, the same her husband suffered, but Grace isn’t giving the woman the satisfaction.

“Yeah! Let’s get ready to rock and roll buckaroo!” She screams, smiling as the gag goes into her mouth.

“Jesus, Grace are you okay?” Alex asks as if he expects her to answer.

Grace restrains from rolling her eyes. But she does let out a muffled scream when the knife is buried in her chest.

\----

She treats herself to a bubble bath, soaking in the fruit scented water until her skin turns wrinkly. In a morbid twist, she breaks the glass holding the shampoo and buries the shards into her skin. The fruity smell is soon replaced with metallic and she feels the darkness surrounding her.

She’s barely conscious when she hears Daniel scream her name and applies pressure to her wounds. She smiles a weak smile and tells him not to worry. He cries and begs anyway.

(With what little consciousness she has left, she swears to never slits her wrists again.)

(She never thought of how Daniel would react to her death.)

(Her heart feels full for the first time since the game began.)

(When did she fall for Daniel? She asks herself.)

(The voice in her head says when he chose her.)

\----

A dark side of Grace wants to hide in the boys’ room and let their trigger happy mom do the work for her but it seems a little cruel, even for her. She ignores the boys completely which comes to bite her in the end of one round because Georgie ends up putting a bullet through her stomach.

Grace doesn’t kill him but she does give him a wedgie. 

“I see London, I see France, I see Georgie’s underpants!”

\----

She’s running around the house barefoot in her underwear. She found a record player so the house is filled with the sounds of AC/DC. She has a can of whip cream in one hand and regularly sprays it into her mouth. Grace is not at all shocked that Emilie is the one to kill her this time around.

\----

Grace skips down the hall, the lantern in hand and gasoline in another.

“Burn baby, burn!” Grace half screams, half yells. She found the record that plays a bunch of seventies hits, and started to blare the greatest song of all time. “Burn that mother down! Burn baby burn! Disco inferno!” She belts the last two words, enjoying the situation.

The family, predictable as they are, comes running weapons in hand. They surround her as Grace dances. She begins to pour the gasoline over her head and the family watches in horror.

She laughs as she burns.

The family is too busy arguing to notice the trail of gasoline is also catching fire until it’s too late.

\----

She does the same thing but this time sings 50 Cent’s Disco Inferno. Tony is even angrier than last time to which Grace laughs even harder. Death by fire hurts like a bitch but seeing Tony lose it is more than worth it she thinks.

(She doesn’t want to think it’s so she doesn’t have to think of one of the last things Daniel ever said to her.)

(But she hopes she’s making him proud.)

(She still can’t look at him.)

\----

In a surprising turn of events, while she is skipping away from the trophy room in search of leftover cake she bumps into the one person she’s been avoiding all night and every night.

Daniel.

She never looked at him once in since the sixteenth round of Hide and Go Seek. She was too ashamed to see him and not warn him of his fate. The only good LeDomas. 

The third round of Hide and Go Seek they were running away from the house. They made it to the car before she was shot in the back. When they turned around to see who fired at them, Daniel took a bullet to the eye. Grace sobbed over him and his fragmented skull, screaming and clawing at Fitch and the others. To her, Alex looked a little too eager to plunge the knife into her chest. Asshole.

The fourth round, the two of them gathered his family up and waited until sunrise to free. His family was yelling at him about betraying the family and dooming them all and Alex sits and stares daggers into the two people he thought he could trust. Grace doesn’t care, he betrayed her first so fair is fair. Unfortunately Grace and Daniel failed to see the knife Helene kept under her cape and before Grace could spot it herself Daniel knocked her out of the way and was coughing blood. She let them sacrifice her out of guilt. She wishes Aunt Helene wasn’t the one to serve her up to Satan but it’s not like that actually counted.

Time and time again he helped her and suffered the consequences. 

The fifteenth round, they almost made it. She had the most cuts and bruises so far in the game so he offered to drive. She was weak from the blood loss so she let him, forgetting what happened at dawn. She woke up to the car veering out of control and Daniel nowhere to be found. Until she looked at the windows and her dress and realized it was _his_ blood and meat everywhere. Grace sat in a state of shock until the car finally hit a tree and she flew out the window and woke up in the LeDomas trophy room.

That is when she realized she was a pawn in some bored demon’s sick game. Something in her brain broke and she gave up. There was no use in really fighting it off. But that did not mean giving the LeDomas the satisfaction of seeing her defeated they did not deserve.

Before he can say anything, Grace speaks. “Daniel just get it over with and shoot me already. Take me to your parents and give me up to Mr.LeBail.” She’s not angry, she’s just tired. She’d rather die first this time around than watch him die again.

“Christ, Grace.” Daniel says miserably. “Why don’t you want to live?”

“Because I’ve been through this. I’ve done this so many times.” She answers honestly. “No matter how many times I win or lose, I’m stuck playing this game over and over again. At least let me have some fun while I’m stuck in this hell.”

He looked at her like she was crazy and she supposed she was.

“Alex made a mistake marrying you.” He says, “I know I wouldn’t have.”

The words would have hurt if the situation was different. But it’s not and she sees it as the kindest thing and the most romantic thing she’s ever been told.

“Thank you.” Grace tells him, touching his cheek and placing a gentle kiss on his lips. Daniel is frozen and Grace pulls back, feeling saner than she has in a long time. He looks at her with those big brown eyes and pulls her in for another kiss. This time tongue is involved and so is teeth but it’s still gentle.

Grace pulls away to drink in his features. His breath is heavy and his eyes are desperate. She wants to remember him like this for the rest of time. Not Daniel with the fragmented skull or Daniel choking on his blood. But Daniel, caring and halfway in love with her. Poor boy may be the only man who has ever loved her. 

Grace sinks to her knees and unzips his pants. It’s not something she likes to do but she feels that given all the times he died saving her, she is happy to make an exception. She just hopes she’s good at it.

(Judging by the way his legs twitch and his hands grab her hair and the way he moans, Grace thinks she’s doing just fine.)

\----

When she wakes up in the trophy room she doesn’t bother running or skipping away. She takes five steps away from the door and stands tall in front of the family with their shocked faces and weapons. She’s smiling and holding a dagger she found in the room.

“Hey Alex, I sucked your brother’s dick.” She flips him the bird and with renewed energy, slashes her throat with the knife.

The blood chokes her, fills her throat and mouth but she keeps on smiling. She smiles at their horrified screams and faces. The family is screaming at her, at each other, at the world. Daniel looks confused and surprised at her last words, denying them to everyone asking. Emilie is crying and whining as her husband holds her in his arms. They’re panicking and she _loves_ it. She smiles as she falls down, her body too weak to hold her upright. She smiles until she is covered in blood and facing the ceiling, letting the darkness consume her.

She wakes up in the trophy room, card in hand.

\----

Rounds later, Grace sobers up and regains her sanity. She feels luck is on her side this time around. Still, she makes a real plan this time.

She gathers the maids in one room, telling them to only leave the room in case of an emergency like fire. She breaks the window, apologizes for the cold air, and locks the room behind her. Then she waits in the servants’ quarters. The LeDomas family was too rich to think of looking there until it’s a few hours to sunrise and they turn on the surveillance. But Grace is sneaky and walks the halls until she reaches the Pool Room. Daniel is there, a drink in hand and eyes looking at the fireplace and nowhere at the same time. 

“You tried to warn me,” She says as a way of announcing herself. He jumps up but Grace pays no mind. She pours herself a drink. “You failed, but I appreciate the effort.”

“I have to call the others.” Is all he says. His hand doesn’t touch his gun and Grace finds comfort in knowing nothing has changed between them.

Grace nods. She’s been through this before, knows she has to wear him down with her unwavering belief he can do good. But she is so tired. “I know you don’t believe me, but you are the best LeDomas.”

Instead of accusing her of the bar being on the ground at this point Daniel asks about Alex.

“What about him? I know you think he’s the golden boy but you’ve been the one to help me this entire time. He didn’t tell me anything, just so he could keep me all to himself. That’s why we got married you know. He was so afraid I would fall for someone else he had to trap me in marriage. Didn’t even tell me what could happen. You, on the other hand, never would have married me. You would have burned this place to the ground.”

She hopes the words will trigger something. Deja vu or the past hundred times he’s died. But Daniel looks conflicted. Grace turns to the clock on the mantle.

“We have two hours before sunrise,” She tells him. And then an idea comes to mind. “I know I’m asking a lot of you so just think it over. Don’t drink, just think. Count to ten and let them find me.”

She runs away before he can say another thing to her but she can hear him counting. Slowly but he’s counting.

He calls his family and she runs in the direction of the trophy room. She takes out a bottle of cleaning supplies and pours it into the liquid into the goblet her soon to be ex-in-laws drank in every version they caught her. She hides in the secret passageway until Alex and Daniel walk into the trophy room.

“Why didn’t you tell her about the game?” Daniel asks.

Alex’s response is just as weak and pathetic as the first time. “She wanted to get married and I couldn’t lose her. She made me better.”

Grace rolls her eyes. She is not some trophy she gets for not wanting to commit murder, least of all for a man who would kill her if she decides not to be a trophy anymore.

“Alex, that’s not how it works.”

“Why are you asking about this anyway?”

“Would you choose her over mom? Over me? You can’t have both of us after tonight.”

Before he can stop himself, Alex spits out, “If she doesn’t stay with me, what have I been protecting her for?” 

Both boys are frozen by what Alex just admitted. He just proved what Grace said was right. Even his brother, good, pure Alex, was corrupted by their fucked up family. Little Georgie, he could understand in a way but he tried to help Alex. He tried to raise him right the best he could and he still failed. But he couldn’t fail another innocent. It was time to burn it all down.

It was at this time, Grace chose to come out of hiding. She pretends it’s an accident and runs to Alex, hugging him but her eyes burn cold into Daniel.

“I heard everything.” She mouths.

She looks at Alex, dead in the eye. She has half an hour left and time to prepare.

“I want out Alex. I love you but I can’t do this anymore.” 

“No.” Alex says immediately. “Nononononono, honey you can’t. You can’t leave me. We can fix this, we can fix this.”

Grace is silent, trying to prepare herself for what comes next. It doesn’t get easier to watch the love fade from the eyes of someone she used to love. It hurts more than when he starts to squeeze her head and holds her close so she can’t go. It’s a perversion of every time he held her and kissed her. She doesn’t love him, hasn’t for a long time now, but the pain is still all there.

“She’s in here!” Alex yells and the footsteps of the family follow.

“Hey, hey-” Daniel yells as Alex squeezes her head and the rest of the family runs in. “Alex what the hell?”

“Good job Alex.” Becky says warmly and squeezes his shoulder.

“I’ll prepare the drinks.” Daniel says to which Tony beams with pride.

“I knew you boys would see the true power of family. Fitch, Charity strap her down.”

Grace is so tempted to make a strap-on joke but it doesn’t feel like the right time. She pretends to struggle against the rope. 

“We’re almost out of time,” Helene yells. “Drink the goblet quickly, quickly!”

She snatches it out of Daniel’s hands and drinks it quickly, passing it to Emilie on her left. One by one they each take a sip and start chanting until it reaches Daniel.

She watches him and shakes her head ‘no’. He holds the goblet to his mouth and passes it to Alex, standing over her with a knife.

“Hail Satan!” The family screams. “Hail Satan!”

The knife comes down but before she can feel the pain of the knife in her chest, she feels the bloody vomit cover her torso. Alex fucking puked on her! The bastard. Soon the room is filled with the sounds of gagging and the smell of vomit. Daniel is cutting her loose from the table and dragging her away.

“You bastard!” Tony yells, doubling over in pain. The two run away from the trophy room and towards the foyer. 

“They’ll be fine, just shit weird for a week.” Daniel reassures her.

“Oh I poisoned the goblet before you guys found me.” Grace says, feeling a little lightheaded. This was new.

“Well shit.” Daniel says as they turn the corner. They hear the sound of the family’s footsteps coming after them. They make it to the foyer but to their shock the front door is locked.

“Dammit!” Daniel says, throwing his body against the door. But Grace isn’t looking at that.

“Look,” She points to the window above the door, the darkness is fading to light and the two watch as the light bleeds the dark.

Grace wonders if she failed her last round. “Screw it.” She puts a hand on Daniel’s arm so he can stop trying to break the door. He looks to her, tears in his eyes. He looks as tired as she feels.

“I don’t want you to die.” He says softly.

Grace smiles sadly at him and places a hand on his cheek. He sinks his face into the gentle gesture and he’s short enough that she places a soft kiss on his lips. He doesn’t hesitate to kiss her back this time around and she smiles against his kiss.

Too bad it had to be cut short.

“You whore!” Alex yells. The couple parts to see him covered in vomit, pale as ever, and anger etched in his features.

Unlike the rest of the family who are watching Grace and Daniel’s embrace, Helene is pointing at the window in horror. “Oh my God!” 

She turns to yell behind her. “I failed you once, I refuse to fail you again!” She raises her axe and Daniel pushes Grace out of the way. It’s pointless, Grace knows because as soon as Helen takes a step forward, she explodes in small chunks of blood and guts.

The familiar song of Hide and Go Seek plays and Grace throws her head back in glee. The family panics. They don’t even notice the fire that Grace doesn’t remember starting. It follows the same way they’ve died the first time- Fitch regretting everything, Charity begging for her life, Emilie running away this time to see her boys one last time, Becky is new but she accepts death with as much grace and dignity while still looking angry, and Tony throwing a tantrum, demanding to be spared. It’s only Alex, Daniel, and her left. They’re covered in the blood of their family and surprised that the curse is real. The flames are catching up to them so Grace acts quickly. She accepts Tony’s blood splatter easily and walks to Alex.

“Alex?” He turns to her, daring to be hopeful. She refuses to smile though. “I want a divorce.” 

She throws her ring and Mr. LeBail with his impeccable timing blows him up as soon as the ring hits him.

The door opens, as if by magic and Grace hears a slow clap. In the corner of her eye she can see the outline of Mr. LeBail by the stairs.

She’s free.

Injured, bruised, and broken. Traumatized beyond comprehension. Covered in the bloody vomit of her ex husband. But she’s free.

She holds Daniel’s hand as the ambulance takes them away and she can see the maids are running away from the house, panicked and afraid. Grace can’t help but think victory never felt as sweet as it did in that moment.

**Author's Note:**

> I think trying to write a crack fic and turning it into something a little serious is an example of how I cannot make a good joke, like ever.  
> Hope you guys enjoyed the fic! Please leave comments down below!
> 
> Also I made a Ready or Not moodboard on [ Tumblr ](https://aestheticmoodbo.tumblr.com/tagged/ready-or-not) that wasn't showing up so please reblog if you can!


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